Massachusetts, United States, Pesach 2024. Photo taken by Rowyn Peel.
hi!
az lawrie (pronouns: he/him) is a quasiprofessional mess masquerading as an amateur musician, deliberately failed academic, reasonably coherent writer, and emotionally mature adult. az has been referred to as "thoughtful, insightful, kind, and caring" (az's mother) and “mozart's waluigi” (Emery Kerekes). az has been rejected from numerous highly regarded degree awarding institutions and summer festivals. presently, az can be found knitting, complaining about inaccessibility in academia, and/or experiencing elf emotions.
to get in touch with az, follow the email link above.
B.Mus cello performance, DePaul University School of Music; M.Mus cello performance, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance; M.Mus musicology and ethnomusicology, King's College London.
az has previously been known by other names, some of which may appear on this website and elsewhere on the internet. where possible, please refer to az as az and not any other name. the all-lowercase spelling of az’s name is intentional and should be observed wherever possible (acknowledging the limitations of some online places in this regard); if all-lowercase is not possible, please spell as AZ Lawrie.
things that are on this website: the homepage (you are here); a long and likely confusing artistic statement; a semi-complete list of people who have influenced the thing that az is; a blog that az has been keeping since March 2018, though it became much more sporadic once he stopped being a full-time student in late 2020.
if you’re confused about why az is writing about himself in the third person, don’t worry, so is he.
it's not a bad thing to need other people. it's never a bad thing. don't let anyone convince you that you don't need other people.
I had set myself a concrete goal which I thought might be attainable (in contrast to my more abstract, intangible artistic and musical goals which don’t really have any end point), and I now found myself in the unfamiliar position of having reached such a goal.
People use my name to learn something about my personality, but if I didn't choose the name, it doesn't say anything about me.
i am trans. i am deeply trans. the framework that i use to think about gender is entirely trans. i am trans, and i am a man, and i am not a trans man.
The conceit for this playlist spawned from my dissatisfaction with the latest iteration of Spotify Wrapped. Broadly, I don’t consider it to be an accurate reflection of my overall music taste - I mean, 5 songs/artists is such a small number compared to the actual amount of music that I listen to on at least a semi-regular basis. This year in particular, my music taste has opened up significantly with the help of one of my friends (you know who you are <3). Thus, I decided to take my top 21 artists from the last 12 months according to www.statsforspotify.com and pick one song by each of them. The playlist is in reverse order (i.e. #21 first, #1 last). If 21 seems like an arbitrary number, it’s actually slightly less so than the original number, which was 20; I saw Father John Misty at #21 and ultimately decided I needed to include him.
I am making this playlist on December 7/8, 2024. My song choices are influenced by the contexts I’m working within at this specific moment in time.
it's not a bad thing to need other people. it's never a bad thing. don't let anyone convince you that you don't need other people.
this feels familiar, the thing of writing a blog post and not having any answers at the end of it.
death doesn’t feel like justice to me. another person’s pain does not feel like justice to me. it’s not cathartic or joyful or even any meaningful amount of relief.